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Holly Miller’s competitive training includes everything from weight lifting to pulling a vehicle with a rope.

Courtesy of Holly Miller

Holly Miller has never let psoriatic arthritis stop her from leading an active life. Now the 38-year-old mom and high school special education teacher is preparing for a unique athletic challenge: On September 3, she’ll compete in the World’s Strongest Disabled Man event in London.

Miller will carry 110-pound sandbags, lift 140-pound weights known as Atlas Stones, and tow the cab of a tractor-trailer with a rope as part of the upcoming strength competition. That’s no small feat, especially for someone who has battled psoriatic arthritis since childhood. “Some days, the pain makes it difficult to get out of bed and function,” says Miller, who lives in Lorain, Ohio.

Miller’s psoriatic arthritis wasn’t properly diagnosed until last year. “In hindsight, it all makes more sense now,” she says. “When I was a kid, I was always having pain in my knees and back. My parents would take me to the doctor, and the doctor would say, ‘Oh, you’re just having growing pains’ or ‘You just have scoliosis; you’ll grow out of it.’ I thought it was normal and other kids were going through it as well. Maybe I was making a big deal about nothing.”

Back Troubles

When she was in her early twenties, Miller taught three hour-long aerobics classes a day, while working full time as a schoolteacher. When she consulted a chiropractor about her back pain, the doctor suggested she see a surgeon. “When a chiropractor tells you to go see a surgeon, you know your back must be pretty messed up,” she says, with a laugh.

Miller had spinal fusion surgery in 2003, just before her 24th birthday. She still has metal brackets and screws helping to hold her spine together. After three more surgeries and over 100 other procedures for her back, Miller has learned to live with and work through the pain.

“I tried not to think too much about it because there really was no other option,” she says. “I needed to work. I wasn’t going to go out on disability. That wasn’t even an option in my mind.”

Becoming a Mom

Miller gave birth to a baby girl in 2015. “When I was pregnant, it threw everything into remission,” she says. “Pregnancy was nine months of pure pain-free bliss. But as it happens with many women, once I gave birth, everything came roaring back a thousand times worse. I sat down with my pain management doctor and my regular doctor and said, ‘We need to figure this out, something is definitely wrong here.’”

Getting Diagnosed

When Miller went to get a CAT scan, an alert technician noticed that she had scaly patches of skin on her legs related to psoriasis. “Oh, you must have psoriatic arthritis,” the technician said. “That would explain a lot of the pain you have.” When she went back to her doctors to have her blood tested, they agreed with the diagnosis.

For Miller, getting the diagnosis was a revelation. “If it wasn’t for that chance meeting, I’d probably still not know what I had,” she says. “It’s not fun to have it; but at the same time, it was a huge relief. It was like, finally, I’m not crazy. There is something wrong.”

Miller takes the injectable drug Enbrel (etanercept) for her arthritis and Neurontin (gabapentin) for nerve pain. But she believes that her fitness regimen — a combination of weight-training, yoga, and stretches — helps her maintain a positive mindset without anxiety and antidepressant medication. In July, Miller had foot surgery to remove bone spurs caused by the arthritis, but she was back lifting weights in no time and even worked out while wearing a surgical boot for a month.

Miller started lifting weights three and a half years ago. “I had wanted to lose weight, and the gym is right in town,” she says. “At first, I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t even lift the bar.”

Miller recalls that she couldn’t lift the bar when she started training with weights.

Courtesy of Holly Miller

A big part of the challenge, Miller admits, was overcoming her feelings of insecurity. “I had to get over the fact that I was embarrassed being there,” she says. “Not only were there people younger than me there, but there were people older than me that could run circles around me. I got to the point that just being at the gym was good enough for me. I had to compete against myself and not everyone else.”

The Road to Competing

When the gym started hosting strength competitions, Miller began her uphill climb to becoming a strongwoman. “I’d participate in the competitions they had in the gym,” she says. “I would always finish last … and I was okay with that because the events were fun.” Then, this past spring, Miller heard about a competition for disabled athletes. At first, she wasn’t sure if her psoriatic arthritis would qualify her. “But the organizer was great,” she recalls. “He said, ‘Of course you can enter. Why wouldn’t you be allowed to compete?’ So, I entered it on short notice, and I won.”

That victory qualified Miller for the World’s Strongest Disabled Man competition, making her one of just three women participating in the contest for the first time. She set up a website to help raise money for her trip to the event in London.

Miller has been working out six days a week at the gym to prepare. “My family used to ask me, ‘Why are you lifting all that weight? You’re going to mess up your back,’” she says. “I tell them, ‘I can’t mess up my back any more than it already is, so I may as well have fun doing it.’”

Miller says it doesn’t really matter where she places in the competition. By staring down her condition and not letting it prevent her from competing, she feels like she’s already won. No matter the outcome, she’ll come right back home to her daughter and to teach her students.

“Most of my students compete in sports, so they lift weights too,” Miller says. “To have them be able to ask their female high school teacher for weight lifting advice, that’s a pretty cool thing.”